Five Policy Clashes Between John Bolton and President Trump

Image

President Trump sits across from Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, at a meeting in Vietnam in February. John R. Bolton, left, disagreed with the president over how to handle North Korea.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

The two men have regularly been at odds over how to take on major foreign policy challenges facing the United States. Mr. Bolton, a longtime national security hawk, held some views that contrasted with Mr. Trump’s, favoring sanctions and pre-emptive military action against some countries even as the president pursued diplomacy.

And on Tuesday, the two men also disagreed on the circumstances of Mr. Bolton’s ouster.

In a midday Twitter post, just 90 minutes before Mr. Bolton was scheduled to join Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a briefing for reporters, Mr. Trump wrote that, on Monday night, he asked Mr. Bolton to submit his resignation and that Mr. Bolton complied Tuesday morning. But responding to a question from The New York Times via text, Mr. Bolton said he had offered Mr. Trump his resignation “last night without his asking,” and submitted it in the morning.

Here are five countries that prompted policy disagreements between Mr. Trump, who has been reluctant to expand military America’s footprint abroad, and Mr. Bolton during his 17 months in the post.

Afghanistan

Most recently, Mr. Bolton was the leading voice against negotiating a peace plan with the Taliban — an idea supported by Mr. Trump and Mr. Pompeo with the goal of removing American troops from Afghanistan after almost 18 years of war. Mr. Trump went so far as to schedule negotiations to take place at Camp David over Labor Day weekend.

Mr. Bolton had argued that the United States could withdraw some troops from Afghanistan — and keep one of the president’s campaign promises — without making a pact with members of a terrorist group.

Mr. Trump ultimately canceled the meeting, but aides in support of the negotiations blamed Mr. Bolton for public leaks about his opposition.

North Korea

Mr. Trump views one of his major foreign policy achievements to be the melting of tensions between the United States and North Korea. While Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he was “not happy” that North Korea chose to conduct weapons tests in May, he has played down their significance and said that the tests did not distill his optimism that the two countries could continue negotiations over American sanctions and the North’s denuclearization efforts.

After Mr. Trump became the first sitting American president to set foot in North Korea when he met with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, in June, Mr. Bolton reacted angrily to a New York Times report about a possible agreement in which the United States would make concessions in exchange for North Korea freezing its nuclear activity. Mr. Bolton had long argued that North Korea should dismantle its entire nuclear program before getting any reward. But others in the administration, including the president, were open to considering a step-by-step process.

Iran

Video

Tensions between the United States and Iran have sharply increased. John Bolton, the national security adviser, has long pushed for regime change in Iran. One of his chosen replacements is the dissident group Mujahedeen Khalq, known as M.E.K.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Long before he was Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Mr. Bolton had advocated military action against Iran. Mr. Trump has recently focused on a diplomatic approach to Iran, saying he was willing to meet with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran under the right circumstances. The meeting would be the first of its kind since the Tehran hostage crisis that began in 1979 and ended in 1981.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Bolton did agree on one major policy decision: withdrawing the United States from the Obama-era nuclear deal in May 2018. Tensions between the two countries have risen due to that decision and the crippling sanctions the United States reimposed on Iran. In June of this year, the president rejected a plan by his advisers, led by Mr. Bolton, to retaliate with military action after Iran shot down an American surveillance drone, saying that such an attack would have been disproportionate.

Venezuela

After the United States and allied countries declared that President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian government was illegitimate and threw their support behind the opposition movement led by Juan Guaidó, Mr. Trump grew frustrated that the efforts to push out Mr. Maduro had not met with immediate success.

The Trump administration learned it had less influence in the region than anticipated, leaving the White House-backed opposition in a stalemate with the Maduro government for months. Mr. Trump has questioned his administration’s strategy there, while Mr. Bolton continued to push for more pressure from the United States, and in August said, “now is the time for action.”

Russia

As recently as last month, Mr. Bolton assured Ukrainians that they would receive support in their conflict with Russian separatists, but the White House has done little to show it backs that promise. In recent days, the White House has delayed a military assistance package for the Ukrainian government. And Mr. Trump has privately told aides that he considers Ukraine to have a corrupt government.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Hawk vs. President, as Sketched in Five Policy Clashes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe